


In Rode A Stranger

by bluestar



Category: Fallout New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 10:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 8,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestar/pseuds/bluestar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(When I find an open-world game, I just can't leave well enough alone.)</p><p>Richie, a Pre-War ghoul and his partner Anna wander the desert as messengers, running errands for anyone with enough caps to keep them going another day in the New Vegas Wasteland. Their latest trip has an unexpected hitch when they find a half-dead NCR soldier who they decide to take along with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

1.

 

“Anna, wait. Please wait.”

            A bullet bit the ground at Richie’s feet, making him yelp and jump back.

            “Don’t be a bitch, c’mon!”

            Another bullet made Richie dance back with a stupidly twisting mock-pirouette. Anna kept walking – or rather, kept marching. She was _pissed._ Richie sighed, running a hand through the sparse remnants of his hair. He winced as a meager handful of it came out and blew away as easily as dandelion fluff.

            “Anna, it was an _accident!_ You can’t seriously be this angry over an accident. How was I supposed to know they’d take it that badly?”

            Anna stopped short and turned on her heel. Richie cursed himself for cringing back as she marched right up to him and put the hot muzzle of her laser pistol under his chin. The girl barely reached his breastbone, but she still managed to scare the everliving shit out of him when she was angry.

            “You _fucked_ the sheriff’s _daughter._ ”

            Richie winced.

            “She was all over me! For god’s sake, a man’s got needs-“

            “SHE WAS BLASTED ON _JET_ AND YOU’RE _ROTTING.”_

“That is completely beside the point! I’m a human being, and human beings stuck with small angry women who don’t believe in putting out have _NEEDS!”_

            Anna studied him silently, the laser pistol pressed up hard into soft flesh. Richie tried not to blink, determined not to show fear. After a long moment, she sighed, holstered the gun and turned away. Richie followed a few steps behind, hands shoved into his pockets.

            “You’re absolutely disgusting. And now we’re completely fucked over, you realize that? We stopped in in that one-horse sinkhole for supplies. Food. Water. _Ammo._ We have nothing.”

            “We’re surrounded by animals and shit that grows out of the ground,” Richie said, his natural casual optimism returning now that Anna had reigned in the worst of her temper. “C’mon, we’ve done hunter-gatherer plenty of times. I happen to know you love my mole rat stew.”

            “When you’re starving to death, anyone would love mole rat stew.”

            “…what’s that supposed to mean?”

            Anna grumbled something insulting under her breath, kicking a loose piece of asphalt out of her way. The ancient road they walked on was a bluish-grey ribbon across the Mojave, great cracks and upheavals in the land making it a crooked path to follow. The sunlight was fading slowly, and long shadows were cast over the lonely hills. Richie jumped as he heard a coyote yip close by, and let a hand stray to the magnum .44 slung loose on his hip.

His hunting rifle had been out of ammo for days, and he was short on .44 slugs as well. Anna’s laser pistol only had enough juice left for half a dozen shots, and that was more than enough to put her in a terrible mood. Energy cells were painfully rare in the desert. The only good secure place to get them was Silver Rush, and Richie owed them what was left of his hide after killing one of their guards. It had, he’d explained to Anna as they fled Freeside, all been an innocent misunderstanding. He’d thought he’d been pickpocketing an NCR grunt, not a Van Graff hired goon. The scuffle that had resulted had been an exercise in survival of the fittest, and Richie had made it clear he’d had no intention of dying.

 Anna had actually slapped one of his teeth out of his mouth for that whole mess.

“So…” Richie began, after an hour’s silence. Anna ignored him. Her old cracked boots crunched on the dusty gravel.

“Anna.”

Silence.

“Annie. Annie Marie. Annie Bannie fo-Fannie.”

An aggravated sigh.

“You know what I was thinking? Maybe we should head south. We’ve seen a whole lot of the west, and it’s pretty okay. Stable, even. It’s losing its excitement. Maybe there’s something left of Mexico City. That’d be interesting.”

“Mexico is irradiated.”

Richie grinned triumphantly. Her tone might’ve been cold, but at least she was talking to him again.

“Lots of places are irradiated. Hell, Nevada’s got spots that’ll make the Geiger tick. What difference does it make?”

“Plenty, when only one of us can walk through it and not be full of cancer afterwards.”

“Alright, alright, no Mexico. How about we amble back to California?”

“I’m sick of the NCR. I’m not going back to Cali. You can go.”

Richie made an offended noise.

“You think I’m any more a fan then you? After what they did to me?”

Anna sighed, long and deep.

“You were drunk and naked. It was midnight. The guy had every right to think you were a feral ghoul.”

“He shot me in the _face._ ”

“It didn’t muss your looks none.”

It was Richie’s turn to grumble.

“If you’re gonna be this much of a bitch, I ain’t talkin’ to you for awhile.”

“Well then. Proof of a loving God.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

As the sun set and the stars shone glimmering and white over the desert, the human and ghoul walked on, each extremely irritated with the other.

 


	2. Chapter 2

2.

 

 

“You think he’s dead?”

“If he isn’t, that’s the best bit of playing ‘possum I ever saw.”

Anna had found a body in NCR power armor under a bush. She’d seen his leg sticking out at an unnatural angle, and had at once decided to investigate. The reek coming from the armor was incredible – even Richie didn’t smell that bad.

“You think the odor’ll take away from scav value?”

Anna shrugged, nudging the man – or woman –with the toe of her boot. The armored head lolled slightly in the dirt. There was an inch of exposed space between the helmet and gorget, exposing dirty, blood-tacky skin. A fly crawled between the space up into the helmet. Anna tried not to make a disgusted face.

“Nah. Stink or not, power armor has heavy-duty value. Help me strip.”

“Buy me a drink and let me put it in your mouth first.”

Anna, already kneeling beside the figure, jabbed a bony elbow backwards and up. It connected with Richie’s crotch quite satisfyingly. It also meant she’d have to do most of the stripping alone while he picked himself up out of the dirt, but it had been worth it.

“Alright, you stinkin’ sonofabitch,” she said under her breath, trying to work the helmet loose. “Gimme this.”

She twisted and turned the helmet, but it refused to come off. With a muttered curse, Anna sat atop the figure’s chest and glared. She briefly wished for a hatchet so she could just lop the head off and rattle it free. She’d done it before. Granted, the mess was atrocious and she’d been put off eating meat for a month, but a thousand caps had been a thousand caps, and one shelved personal comfort in the face of work ethic. Scavenge this good didn’t show up out of the blue too often.

The thought, meant to be almost optimistic, gave Anna pause.

“Richie?”

“You _elbowed_ my _dick_ you godless son of a….”

“Richie.”

“Eat _shit,_ Anna.”

“Richie you skinless fuck, shut up a minute.”

The ghoul rolled over onto his back, hands still between his legs and a deeply unhappy expression on his face. Anna shifted, sitting cross-legged on the body’s chest and looking thoughtful.

“You think Legion wanders around here?”

“What? How the hell should I know? People die out here all the time, doesn’t mean a bunch of historical-roleplaying psychopaths did it. There’s barely even a dent in the armor aside where your fat ass is bending it.”

Anna picked up a rock and threw it at Richie. It bounced off his forehead and made him look even unhappier.

“Another small mystery in a mysterious world,” she said, looking back down at the helmet. She took hold of it, braced her feet against the ground, and gave a good, sound yank. The helmet barely budged, an awesome reek and broken skin spilling blood the only result. Anna made to yank again, then paused.

“Oh, god dammit.”

“What?”

“I dinged the body up a bit, and it’s bleeding.”

“So?”

Anna looked over at Richie with a world of withering reproach in her expression.

“The zombie doesn’t understand the meaning of a dead body bleeding.”

“We’ve been over this before, Anna. I’m not dead, I shed.”

“Mm. You goddamn poet, you. Get up outta the dirt already.”

It took a moment, but Richie eventually complied. His clothes had transformed from dusty gray to dirty orange from rolling around on the ground for so long.

“Help me get this helmet off. Gently.”

With an extra pair of hands, removing the helmet went a bit easier. There was a thick stream of sticky, half-dried blood that practically glued the helmet down, and by the time to damned thing had been twisted off the smell was turning Anna’s stomach. There were thin trails of fresh blood running freely down the bruise-mottled neck and swollen cheeks, and Anna sighed as she looked at the damage.

“He’s alive. God _dammit._ ”


	3. Chapter 3

3.

 

Sitting in the sometimey shade of a half-dead pine, Anna, Richie and the NCR trooper waited out the worst of the afternoon heat. The trooper’s armor lay discarded off to the side in a bloody, stinking pile. Richie’s first appraisal that it was in perfect condition had proven very wrong – the back was riddled with golf ball-sized holes, and the back of the helmet had the punched-in look of taking a forcible hit. The back of the trooper’s head was a raw mess, and the flies that had crept under his helmet had taken to turning it into a maggot’s nursery. Richie, seeing the look of undeniable disgust on Anna’s face, had volunteered to pick them out.

Their last remaining purified water had been used to wash the oddly shallow wounds all over the soldier’s back. Whatever had gotten him had been strong enough to punch through the metal armor, but had only managed to sink in one to two inches into flesh. When Richie pointed them out, Anna had cursed like a trucker.

“Fucking cazadores.”

“Jesus. How is this guy not dead?”

“Fuck if I know.”

The cleaning process had taken a good two hours, patching up cuts and abrasions, bandaging, and – not without some misgivings – injecting stimpaks. If the trooper wasn’t awake and talking, at least he wasn’t about to completely shuffle off the mortal coil. The pair was using his chest as an impromptu table, playing a half-assed game of poker. He coughed every now and then, upsetting the pebbles they used for chips.

“Maybe we should play on the ground,” Richie suggested.

“Fuck that. I’m not hurtin’ my neck cranin’ down to look at the dirt. Deal.”

As the sun eased slowly behind the hills, Anna stood up and dusted herself off. Her hands were dirty, and all she managed to do was leave dusty streaks all over her ragged skirt.

“You need new clothes.”

“You need more skin.”

“Fuck you, woman. Go make my dinner.”

Anna rummaged in the canvas rucksack that held their pitiful store of supplies, and threw a prickly pear at Richie. It hit him in the face and landed on the trooper. He coughed again as though in weak protest.

“Eat up.”

“ _Always._ You _always_ aim for my face. One of these fuckers _shot me_ in the face.”

“Uh huh.”

The trooper offered neither defense nor apology as Richie glared at him, peeling the prickly pear with his teeth.

“Where d’you think he came from?” Anna said, looking out into the empty expanse. New Vegas shone like a gaudy star fallen to earth towards the west, but it was far too long a distance to carry the trooper back. “Only real civilization this way is Jacobstown.”

“He ain’t a ranger,” Richie said through a mouthful of fruit. He paused to spit out a seed. “Rangers don’t wander around in power armor. He was part of a unit.”

“He was the only one we found, though. Maybe he got separated?”

“Could be. He was pretty dinged up. Maybe they stumbled on the cazador nest and he panicked?”

Anna shrugged, looking down at the trooper. His head was pillowed with Richie’s rolled up jacket, and the swelling in his face had gone down slightly. His lips were cracked and he had a broken nose, but considering he’d been cooking in his armor for God knew how long, he was in acceptable shape.

“Might explain why the stings are only on his back. Must’ve turned yellow.”

Richie spit another seed in her direction.

“Lot of people’ll turn yellow when they see a bug the size of a dog buzzin’ towards ‘em.”

Anna, who had once turned tail and ran after being startled by an angry bloatfly, couldn’t disagree.

“Doesn’t explain the head injury, though.”

“We found him at the base of the hill. It’s a pretty bumpy roll down if you trip.”

Anna grunted in agreement, looking up the hill. It got steeper the higher it went, and there were rough-edged boulders everywhere.

“You think they’re still up there?”

“What’s left of ‘em, maybe. Cazadores strip meat pretty quick.”

The trooper gave a wet, gargling cough, and a bloody froth suddenly seeped out from between his lips. Richie cursed, elevating his head. The trooper’s eyes cracked open a fraction, tears starting to streak down his face.

“Hhh-! Hhhhh-!”

“No, no, you gotta hold still. I know it hurts. Hold still, you’ll make it worse-“

The trooper bucked weakly in Richie’s grip, mouth working and the froth spilling down his chin. Anna, diving into the rucksack, drew out the battered emergency bottle of Buffout and their last two stimpaks. Richie took a stimpak, but suddenly the trooper’s hands were at his throat.

“You’d be better at choking me if you weren’t as limp as a noodle, kid,” he said. The trooper slurred something loudly, and Anna thought she heard a word or two in the garbling.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey. Calm down. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

The trooper slurred again, and suddenly his body convulsed as though he was going to vomit. A great torrent of bile and froth spilled from his mouth and onto Richie, and he slumped back.

“Jesus MERCIFUL GODDAMN _CHRIST-“_

“ _DO. NOT. DROP HIM.”_

“HE PUKED ON ME!”

Anna hit Richie hard upside the head.

“He’s passing the venom. Be happy it’s not shooting out the other end.”

Richie eased the gasping, gagging trooper back onto his makeshift bedding, and then stood. He was soaked with watery, bloody vomit.

“I hate my life. I fucking hate my life.”

Anna, busy wetting a rag with the dregs of their water so she could mop up the trooper’s mouth, didn’t reply.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

 

“We’re never going to see that armor again, you know.”

“Shut up.”

“At least a thousand caps. Just sitting in the dirt for whatever jackass comes across it.”

“Shut. Up.”

“But the trip hasn’t been a total loss. I mean, we found a half-dead soldier. We can sell him for at least ten caps. I’m sure that parlor trick with the projectile vomiting will net us something.”

“Will you _shut up.”_

Carrying heavy cargo across the desert was never fun, but it was done without complaint if it was worth something. Carrying moaning, self-soiling, vomiting people, however, was something completely different. And what was worse, he’d developed a fever. He was raving incoherently and seemed to think Anna was either his mother or his nurse – he’d scream for her whenever she was out of his sight, and mumbled and gurgled at her whenever she was.

“We could just leave him,” Richie said, readjusting his grip as the trooper tried to yank himself free.

“We could. Hell, we probably should,” Anna said, wiping the sweat off the trooper’s forehead with her sleeve.

The pair was carrying the trooper between them, Richie with the legs, Anna with the arms. It was highly doubtful the trooper was comfortable being carried like a sack of potatoes, but even if he could complain, no one would be listening.

“Sunny today.”

“Shut up.”

“Sunny and hot. How hot do you think it is today, Anna? Ninety? Ninety five?”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah. Feels like ninety five. And it’s only ten in the morning. Gosh, this is gonna be a fun day, isn’t it? I just have that feeling.”

Jacobstown was a full day’s march in a completely different direction then they’d been planning. And frankly, they didn’t even know if they’d be let in, especially with a raving sack of NCR baggage.

“It’s not that bad a place,” Richie had argued. “The muties up there are pretty docile if you don’t fuck around and try to shoot ‘em.”

Anna had strongly disagreed with going anywhere near the mountain town, but in the end there was no other choice. They’d started early in the morning to avoid the heat, and were already halfway there. Anna was exhausted, sweating and sore. Richie was evidently cooking in the sun, and his usual rotten odor had intensified to the point of gagging.

“Soon as we get there, I’m getting you a fucking bath,” she said. Richie grunted in response. His dingy t-shirt was tacky with juices that might have been sweat, and his exposed muscle tissue looked particularly raw. Traveling in the heat had never really agreed with him. The trooper coughed, a thin trickle of froth oozing from the corner of his mouth.

“Dammit, he’s foaming again.”

“Oh, Jesus have mercy. Just let him do it on himself. We’re not stopping again to clean him up. Bad enough he pissed himself.”

Anna sighed, looking down at the trooper. His face was remarkably young, unscarred and lacking the inevitable weathering of roughing it in the wastes.

“Bet you five caps he thought he’d be strollin’ the Strip when he got deployed here.”

“All the kids do. S’what makes them stupid and careless, thinkin’ the land’s tamer here. Securitrons don’t wander the desert, you’d think they’d know that by now.”

“We were all young and stupid once,” Anna sighed. Richie snorted.

“May not be young anymore, but we’re both still stupid.”

“Why’s that?”

“Look at what we’re doing.”

Anna couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“No argument here.”


	5. Chapter 5

5.

 

 

The air heavy with the smell of pine, and snow had begun to crunch underfoot. After the torturous march through the desert, the mountain path to Jacobstown was almost heavenly.

“I always liked it up here,” Richie said as they took a break, sitting on a mossy boulder by the road. The trooper lay stretched out on an impromptu bed of fallen pine needles at their feet, sweating with fever despite the chilly breeze.  “Hey, gimme one of those.”

“I found ‘em,” Anna said, holding the banana yucca fruit she’d scavenged close to her chest. “Go get your own.”

“I’ll pay you for one,” Richie said, watching Anna attack one of the fruit like a piranha. She grinned at him around a mouthful, a bit of juice dribbling down her chin.

“What’ll you give me?”

“A kiss. Right on your cheek.”

Anna pondered this, then nodded, tapping her slightly gaunt cheek. Richie leaned over, gave her a peck, and took a fruit.

“I love it when fruit’s cold,” she said, wiping off the clear, broken blister-esque fluid that Richie’s lips had left on her face. “Makes ‘em taste better.”

“You think he’s hungry?”

“Probably. I’m surprised he didn’t throw up his kidneys last time.”

The pair looked down at the trooper. He’d gotten brilliantly sunburned as they’d lugged him along in the desert.

“What a lightweight.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t have skin to burn.”

“Muscle tissue burns.”

Anna snorted, gnawing her yucca fruit to the core. She belched, smacked her lips, and tossed the core over her shoulder.

“You’re a real classy dame, you know that?” Richie said dryly as she hopped off the boulder. Anna grinned at him, loosening the belt that held her skirt up around her bony hips.

“You bet your rotten ass I am. Now if you excuse me, I gotta take a shit.”

“ _Jesus,_ spare me the fuckin’ details…”

Anna hiked up the hill to find a decent boulder or tree to take care of business behind. As she walked, she picked up on the unpleasantly strong odor of wet wool and dung. Frowning, she kept hiking. Above the first rise she got a fright as a bighorner ewe snorted at her, lowering her head threateningly away from a calf the size of a large dog. Anna backed off immediately, and walked right back into another ewe. It lipped at her ear, bared its teeth, and then shoved past her. Anna made a disgusted sound and tried to wipe the thick film of saliva off her head.

“Puke, pus, juices and piss,” she muttered to herself. “The fun never ends.”

The herd of bighorners mostly ignored her as she slinked through, trying to avoid the giant patties of dung that dotted the close-cropped grass like landmines. She’d found a perfect outcropping of rock to use, and had her skirt hiked up and her underwear drawn down when she felt hot breath down her neck. Anna turned, intent on shooing the space-invading bighorner away.

“Hello,” the nightkin said, inches away from Anna’s face. “I saw your bum.”


	6. Chapter 6

6.

 

“So you’ll show off for a random super mutant, but I don’t get anything.”

Anna elbowed Richie in the ribs, hard. She burned with unreasonable embarrassment every time the nightkin glanced at her, and it was obviously enjoying her discomfort. The meeting between the trio had been awkward as Richie tried to diplomatically explain why they were headed to Jacobstown. The nightkin, apparently some kind of shepherd when it wasn’t taking hits off a Stealth Boy, had insisted on examining the trooper itself before Richie and Anna could go any further.

“He smells like dead meat,” it had said.

“Sorry. The smell tends to rub off after a while,” Richie had replied, but the nightkin had simply shook its head.

“You might not find any help there. Super mutants are stronger than humans and ghouls. We don’t break when a little bug stings us, or when we trip over.”

“It was either come here or let him die,” Richie had said, shrugging. The answer hadn’t moved the nightkin to compassion, but it had seemed to amuse it. And so an unlikely group now trudged up the broken road to Jacobstown, a herd of bighorners in front, the nightkin carrying the trooper behind.

“I thought these guys were all supposed to be psychotic,” Anna said to Richie in an undertone, avoiding a steaming pile of bighorner dung as they walked.

“It’s talking to itself,” Richie said. “And it apparently has a crush on you. I’d call that plenty psychotic.”

Anna jabbed him in the ribs again, her face turning red. Richie, seeing no reason why the woman could be so humiliated for accidentally flashing her ass, just laughed.

“It was nice of it to offer carrying the guy for awhile. My arms woulda fallen off if I had to pick him up one more time.”

Anna, cursing and dragging her boot across the asphalt to scrape off a wad of dung, ignored him.

Jacobstown, despite being full of hulking super mutants, was quiet and entirely peaceful. The bighorners snorted and grunted as they passed by the mutants, headed docilely back to a sprawling pen in front of the run-down mountain lodge. A super mutant at the gate with a warty face and headset glanced at the nightkin shepherd, then frowned at the unexpected visitors. A moment’s discussion and close look at the NCR trooper, and the mutant nodded.

“Doctor Henry’s probably busy, but he’ll take the time to see your friend,” he said to Anna and Richie as they walked past. He nodded at their guns. “Try not to use those here.”

The lodge smelled of must and pinewood. Several nightkin were gathered in the unlit rooms, muttering and cringing away from view as Anna looked at them. A few regular super mutants roamed the hall, and one sitting on the stairs eating what looked like half of a giant mantis greeted the nightkin shepherd.

“New toy?” it asked, pointing with greasy fingers at the trooper. “I think it’s broken.”

The nightkin jerked its head back at Anna and Richie.

“Their toy first. Maybe they were too rough with it.”

Both mutants laughed as though it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, and Anna shifted uncomfortably.

“We really had to come to this place, didn’t we?” she muttered. It was Richie’s turn to give a jab in the ribs, and Anna fell silent as the super mutant watched them pass, cracking the mantis’ head open with its teeth.

The infirmary smelled of chemicals and antiseptic. An elderly man was sitting hunched at a computer, a small brain hooked up to sensors and stewing in a petri dish beside him.

“-preliminary tests are going well,” he was saying to the ghoul woman taking notes at his side. “That courier really was onto something, using night stalkers…I’m almost ashamed I ever thought of using Lily.”

The woman nodded, then looked over her shoulder with a start as the floorboards creaked loudly under the nightkin’s feet. She gave the trooper a surprised look, and tapped the man – obviously Doctor Henry - on the shoulder.

“Calamity, this is really rather impor…ah. Hmm.”

“They broke their toy,” the nightkin said, nodding at Anna and Richie. “They want you to fix him.”

Doctor Henry pushed away from his desk, giving the pair a rather cool look. The trooper groaned softly in the nightkin’s arms, and he sighed.

“God forbid I ever forsake my oath,” he said, mostly to himself. He gestured at a gurney, and the nightkin laid its burden down. “Alright. Let’s see what we can do.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

7.

 

It was so quiet outside, Anna could actually hear the snow as it fell. It was late in the night but she wasn’t tired, so she sat on the front steps of the lodge in a tatty blanket, watching the snow. Richie, after being sharply rejected by the ghoul woman Calamity, had gone to their borrowed room with a bottle of vodka and a sulky attitude. The doctor was closeted up with the trooper, and there was nothing to do in the meantime. Anna wondered briefly if he would die. If he did, she wondered what they would do with the body. Did super mutants eat humans? Her nose wrinkled at the thought. She wouldn’t allow the kid to become someone’s dinner.

She took a sip of the whiskey she’d traded one of the muties a few yucca fruit for, smacking her lips at the taste. It was terrible whiskey, but when all that was left was centuries old, there wasn’t much room for complaint. It kept her warm at the very least.

In the pastures, the bighorners had bunched together in a tight pack against the cold. Their breath steamed, rising in a faint cloud around them. Anna imagined she could smell the shit-and-dirty-wool reek of them all the way across the lawns. She briefly wished for a cigarette, but remembered she’d quit several years earlier. It was hard enough walking the desert without gasping for breath or hacking up a lung every morning. She took another drink of whiskey instead, and wished she could go see how the trooper was doing.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Anna jumped, glaring over her shoulder. The shepherd nightkin was leering at her from the shadows, fingers stroking the Stealth Boy strapped to its forearm.

“Don’t you have a life?” she snapped in response. The nightkin clicked its teeth at her.

“Just wanted to visit.”

“I don’t want company.”

As though taking it for an invitation, the nightkin trundled down the steps and sat beside her.

“That blanket has night stalker piss on it.”

“I know,” Anna said. “It was either deal with the stink or be cold.”

The nightkin nodded, and the pair sat in silence watching the snow. Anna glanced at the hulking creature once and a while, but the nightkin’s eyes were fixed on the sky. There were breaks in the thick clouds, and hints of stars and the half-waned moon peeked through to turn the snow to falling silver.

“Are you going to stay for a long time?”

“No,” Anna said, taking another drink. “Hell, if the kid’s stable tomorrow me and Richie are out of here. He can find his own way home.”

“Why abandon him when you brought him all this way?”

Anna sighed, pinching at the bridge of her nose.

“Because it would’ve been cruel to leave him to die. But he’s got help now, and I ain’t interested in sticking around. He can be someone else’s problem.”

The nightkin made a gurgling kind of noise.

“What if he dies? Humans die.”

“We’ll bury him and move on.”

“What if he has a family?”

Anna looked up and glared at the nightkin.

“You’re a super mutant. You grind humans to sludge under your boots. What do you care about some dumbfuck NCR greenhorn who got stung by a bee and fell down a hill?”

The nightkin looked keenly back down at her, not answering. Anna turned away, taking a drink.

“They’re probably back in California. And I’m not going back there for anything, least of all for the sake of some human roadkill.”

“Where will you bury him?”

“On the lone prairie.”

The nightkin looked puzzled.

“There is no prairie. Only the desert.”

Anna, tongue looser than she’d anticipated, leaned back a bit so she could watch the silvered clouds roll past. The old words fell from her lips in a wavering song.

 

“ ‘O bury me not on the lone prairie’.  
These words came low and mournfully  
From the pallid lips of the youth who lay  
On his dying bed at the close of day.”

 

The nightkin blinked.

“You’re not good at singing.”

“I’m half in the barrel.”

The nightkin sat in silence for a moment, fingers tapping idly on its Stealth Boy.

“Sing me the rest.”

Anna knocked back more of the bottle, and cleared her throat.

 

"O bury me not on the lone prairie."  
These words came soft and painfully  
from the pallid lips of a youth who lay  
on his dyin' bed, at the break of day.  
  
But we buried him there, on the lone prairie  
where the rattlesnakes hiss and the wind blows free.  
In a shallow grave, no one to grieve  
beneath the western sky, on the lone prairie.  
  
"O bury me not on the lone prairie."  
These words came soft and painfully  
from the pallid lips of a youth who lay  
on his dyin' bed, at the break of day.  
On his dyin' bed, at the break of day.”

 

            Her voice trailed away, and she coughed. The nightkin had gone still and silent, even stopping its nervous fidgeting with the Stealth Boy. Abruptly it stood up, and gnashed its teeth at Anna.

            “Stupid human,” it snapped. Anna looked startled.

            “What the fuck’s your problem?”

            But the nightkin didn’t answer, simply stomping back inside. Anna, whiskey-warm and tired, just shook her head and looked out over the grounds again. The snow had stopped and the clouds had broken open, and the all the world was quiet and silvery.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

 

“ _Fifteen THOUSAND CAPS?!”_

Doctor Henry stood his ground, arms crossed and face implacable.

“Fifteen thousand caps.”

Richie was sitting on a freshly vacated hospital bed, gaping in abject horror.

“We don’t even have a _hundred_ caps! This is extortion! You’re a fucking _extortionist!”_

“Miss Anna,” the doctor said coolly. “I had to implant a PHOENIX monocyte breeder into the patient to prevent total organ failure. I expended my entire stock of Med-X and Buffout, which I assure you was not in small supply. I have, my dear woman, saved this young man from the very jaws of death.”

Anna looked ready to tear her hair out.

“We…you…”

The doctor was entirely unmoved, turning away to straighten a pile of papers on his desk.

“If you can’t front the caps, you’ll owe me scavenged usable goods. I’m quite sorry, but it is not up for negotiation.”

Richie slid off the bed, getting up close to Doctor Henry’s face. He was an imposing figure up close, and the smell of slow, desiccated death clung to him.

“What if we don’t _want_ to pay, smoothskin?” he asked in a low voice, the words trailing off into a soft rattle. Doctor Henry looked at Richie silently, and then let his eyes flicker over the ghoul’s shoulder. There was a sound of shifting feet and Richie turned.

Several super mutants looked back.

“…never mind.”

Unruffled by the failed threat, Doctor Henry pushed Richie away and looked back at Anna.

“Primm has an excellent courier network. I’ll be expecting deliveries if you can’t drop off the goods in person.”

As the pair tromped back outside, Anna was redfaced and livid.

“…pushed around by a geriatric know-it-all fuckhead asshole son of a bitch motherFUCKER _FIFTEEN THOUSAND CAPS THAT JERKOFF COST US.”_

Richie, looking over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure there weren’t super mutants trailing after him, grumbled.

“Speaking of that jerkoff, where the hell is he?”

“Said he wanted to say bye to Marcus. Thank him for all the help, all that bullshit.”

“Hnf. How touching.”

The trooper was waiting at the gate, hands in his pockets. His old uniform had been a ragged wreck, and the only choice had been to beg some old clothes off of Doctor Henry. The trooper was dressed in a settler’s Brahmin-skin rags, looking clean, healthy and vaguely content. He nodded enthusiastically to Richie, and walked towards Anna.

“Ready to go?” he asked, entirely too nicely for Anna to handle. Her jaw worked, and she stared at the man.

“You’re feeling better, right, Micah?”

The fifteen thousand cap walking medical miracle Micah nodded again.

“Yes ma’am.”

Anna’s hand curled into a tight fist, and before Micah could dodge, duck or question why, she slugged him in the face.

 


	9. Chapter 9

9.

 

“So where are we going?”

“Red Rock Canyon.”

Micah stopped dead in his tracks, staring at Anna – or rather, Anna’s back, as she pushed right past him.

“That’s Great Khan territory,” he protested. “They’ll kill me.”

“Only if you open your yap and start calling attention to your allegiances,” Richie said without sympathy. “We got an errand to run.”

“They’re drug runners and gangbangers,” Micah said stiffly. Richie rolled his eyes, and Anna snorted.

“We’re in a fucking post-war wasteland,” she said. “Get off your high horse and join the real world, okay? People do bad things to survive. We use bottle caps as money, for Chrissakes. So what if they run drugs? Better than running flesh like Legion.”

Micah’s lips pressed together, and he fell silent. The next hour was spent in uncomfortable silence, Anna stomping ahead like every pebble was something she was trying to crush to death. Richie, hands in his pockets and popping pinyon nuts every now and then, had fallen back until he was almost half in stride with Micah. The trooper looked at him out of the corner of his eye on occasion, taking in the pale, peeling tatters of skin still clinging to the ghoul’s face.

“You lookin’ at something, kid?” Richie asked, his voice a gravelly mutter. Micah jolted, head swinging the other way in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I just – I’ve never…never really seen a ghoul up close. NCR doesn’t really let them – I mean, I mean you, you’re kind…I mean-“

“Jesus have mercy, will you shut up,” Richie said patiently. “You don’t think I’m used to stares by now? Take as long a look as you want. Hell, gimme a cap and I’ll show you what I got goin’ on under my shirt.”

Micah looked fascinated and vaguely ill.

“What’s…going on under your shirt?”

Richie grinned at Micah, baring slightly yellowed teeth.

“Cap first, smoothskin.”

Anna listened to the chatter behind her with a sense of vague jealousy. Richie was _her_ friend, not some random NCR asshole’s. The sun beat savagely down on her head, and she wished for a hat, or a rainstorm. The wind blew hot and merciless, kissing her face with a wash of gritty sand, and she had to rub it out of her eyes. They began to water and tears streaked down her cheeks in ones and twos, just adding to Anna’s irritation. Behind her, the boys chattered on.

“How old are you, anyway?” Micah was asking. Richie gave a raspy laugh.

“Old as the hills,” he said. “Maybe five times older’n you, at any rate.”

“So…you’re a…?”

“Pre-War ghoul. Yeah.”

“You remember anything about the Old World?”

Richie shrugged indifferently.

“Yeah. That it was full of war-crazy fuckheads that ruined everything for everybody.”

Micah looked disappointed, and Richie snorted at his expression.

“You want a rosier opinion, go ask one of those Brotherhood of Steel idiots. They’re the ones that think it’s important to preserve the past.”

“Anna has a laser pistol,” Micah pointed out.

“And you had power armor,” Richie replied. “Y’know, I was curious about that anyway. We never did find any of your buddies on that hill. Not even bones.”

Micah fell silent, ducking his head and looking away.

“Yeah,” he said vaguely.

“And there was all those stings on your back, too. Young cazadores don’t kill as easy as adults do. That’s why they were all so shallow, right? All the momentum goin’ through the metal but the stinger wasn’t long enough.”

Micah didn’t answer, just looking at the horizon with an uncomfortable expression. Anna, more interested than she would admit, looked over her shoulder.

“Why _were_ you out there?” she asked. “All alone? Beat up and dying?”

The only answer was stubborn silence. Richie and Anna traded interested looks, and let the subject drop.


	10. Chapter 10

10.

 

 

“I don’t feel like it tonight, Richie.”

The fire crackled cheerfully, a slab of gecko meat sizzling on a whittled spit. A pot of honey mesquite beans gurgled in a beaten old camping pot, attracting moths with its sweet smell. Micah, delegated to spit duty, looked over his shoulder at Anna and the ghoul. Richie had a book in his hands, opening the well-thumbed volume to a dog-eared page.

“Too bad. Pull up some dirt and pay attention, this is a good one.”

Anna grumbled, crunching on a raw mesquite pod and resentfully sitting cross-legged next to Richie. He pointed to a word halfway down the left page, holding it close so Anna could see it.

“Go ahead.”

Anna stared at the letters a long time, mouth silently shaping the words. The she started to read out loud, stilted and hesitating.

“ ‘If you can…talk with…with cr…’ ”

“Crowds.”

“Oh. Oh! Okay. ‘If you can talk with _crowds_ , and keep you…your virt…’ ”

“Virtue.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Opposite of what we are. Good, saintly. Virtue, get it?”

“Kinda…okay, okay. “If you can talk with _crowds_ and keep your _virtue,_ or walk with kings-’ ”

“No, say it like there’s two E’s before the N and G, not I as in ‘eye’. Keengs, not k-eye-ngs.”

Anna made an aggressive sound, slapping her hands against her knees, quite like a frustrated child.

“I’m doing the best I can, fuckface.”

Richie tweaked her nose, and nodded to the book. Anna sighed, scratching at her close-cropped hair and focusing on the page again.

“-kings-”

“The whole sentence, Anna.”

“Jesus Christ, al- _right!_ ‘ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with KINGS – n…nor loose…no, _lose_ , nor lose the com…comm…com-mon tuh…tuh…”

Anna looked up at Richie expectantly.

“Ch-uh,” he said simply. Anna scowled in thought, then brightened.

“Tuh-ch-uh. Tuh-uh-ch…touch. _Touch!_ HA!”

Micah became aware of the smell of burning meat, and turned to the now-overdone gecko with a curse. Anna and Richie both looked over at him; Richie seemed indifferent, but Anna, as always, was easily provoked.

“You lookin’ at something interesting?” she snapped at Micah. “Watch dinner, asshole, not me.”

Micah, tired after a long day of walking and more than a little sick of Anna’s attitude, turned the spit and gave her an insolent look.

“I wasn’t aware there were still illiterate people in the world,” he said, losing his temper as she kept scowling at him. “Don’t you think you should be reading ‘I’m Special’ rather than a big girl book?”

Anna’s expression turned darkly furious, and she half-rose before Richie grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her back down. He fixed a very cold look on Micah, and it was the human who looked away.

“Look after the meat and beans, smoothskin,” Richie said. “And mind your own goddamned business.”

Embarrassed and angry, Micah turned away and tried to ignore the pair. Richie was muttering something to Anna, and a minute later she laughed. The tense atmosphere eased a little, and the reading lesson continued.

“ ‘If n…nay…nnnai..nei-ther foes nor lov...loving fuh-reh-ends. Friends. Nor loving friends can hurt you…’ ”


	11. Chapter 11

11.

 

After mocking Anna’s reading, Micah had been ostracized. He trudged behind her and Richie, demoted to resident pack mule. Richie had pulled him aside that morning when they’d broken camp, a stony look on his mutilated face.

“Why don’t you just go home?” he’d said. Micah had had no answer, just silently accepting the luggage and looking down at the ground. And so, the trio set off on another day’s walk, weaving and wandering through the desert. It was hot as usual, but the sky was overcast and the air reverberated with the growls of distant thunder. The humidity was thick, and soon all three were wheezing as damp dust clung inside their throats and caked up in their sinuses.

“Alright,” Richie said, four hours into the miserable hike. “Anna, I’m begging you. Let’s wait for the storm to break. It’ll be cooler.”

Anna wrinkled her nose, though it was only to snort and hock a woodsman into the dirt.

“You’re twistin’ my arm, but I s’pose I can let it slide,” she said. Richie clapped his hands exuberantly, and pointed to the weathered bones of a ruined house in the distance. Hardly an ideal shelter, but it was better than risking exposure in the storm. Someone had squatted there, either long ago or recently – the wind kicked up dust and masked signs of habitation regardless of time.

“Hey, a ham radio,” Anna said, sitting on the dirty mattress and flicking the radio on. A burst of static, and then silence. Anna sighed and clicked it off again. “Never anythin’ on.”

Richie, sprawled on the bed with his arms pillowing his head, made an uninterested noise.

“Why d’you always want to listen to the radio? Mr. New Vegas never plays anything new.”

“Mojave Music Radio has different stuff…”

Micah, sitting on the ground by the crooked door frame, looked over his shoulder at the pair as they bickered. He’d never seen a stranger dynamic between two people. Anna glanced at him, and her mouth twitched into a scowl as she made eye contact. Micah looked away, and back out into the desert. Lighting was crawling through the distant clouds, and the horizon had faded into an indistinct gray haze. 

The first fat drops of rain were beginning to fall when he noticed something moving in the horizon. He watched it, squinting. He jolted with surprise as bright flashes of violently red light burst from the object, and he rose.

“Hey,” he said, cutting into Anna and Richie’s conversation.

“What?”

“The binoculars.”

“Uno-ocular. Only one lens. What about it?”

“Can I borrow it?”

Anna shrugged indifferently, jerking her thumb at the rucksack.

“Knock yourself out, grunt.”

Micah ignored the name-calling, digging through the sack and pulling out the much-battered, much-mended binoculars. The remaining lens was so scratched it seemed like he was looking through a thick, gritty fog into the distance.

“It’s a robo-brain,” he said, deeply surprised. “What’s military hardware doing out here wandering alone?”

Anna perked up, taking the binoculars away from Micah and squinting through them.

“Energy cells,” she said. Richie grinned, sitting up a bit on the mattress.

“And so the land provideth,” he said. “And you thought you’d have to downgrade.”

Anna watched the robo-brain struggling, the red flashes becoming less and less frequent. Suddenly the machine toppled over, and the giant rad-scorpion that had been assaulting it limped around it on its remaining legs.

“Ugh. Always gotta be bugs,” Anna muttered. She looked skywards, and then back at the robo-brain. Richie groaned.

“It can _wait._ ”

“You can wait. Can I borrow the hunting rifle?”

Richie sighed, getting up and slinging the rifle on his shoulder.

“Watch our stuff, grunt,” he said to Micah, pushing Anna out of the shelter. “Gonna get _wet,_ gonna get _scorpion guts_ all over me…”

Micah simply followed them out, the rucksack on his back again. Anna and Richie traded looks, then shrugged and went on. The rad-scorpion was on its side and bleeding out noxious ichor into the dirt by the time they reached it. Richie put a bullet between its eyes before it could muster the strength to attack, and it lay twitching in a disgusting manner as it died.

Micah, meanwhile, knelt beside the fallen robo-brain. He looked all over the muddy, scratched-up chassis for NCR markings, and sighed in disappointment when he could find nothing other than a factory serial number.

“Forget it, grunt. It probably escaped from Nellis and just started wandering,” Richie said. Micah nodded, and started to rise when a vise-like claw suddenly gripped his wrist. It hung on with crushing strength, and it took all of Micah’s self-control not to cry out from the pain. Anna and Richie both cursed, drawing their weapons.

“Excuse me,” the robo-brain said, the claw tightening further on Micah’s wrist. He gave a strangled sound, but didn’t attempt to fight free. The robot could easily rip his arm off.

“Let go of him,” Anna barked. The robo-brain’s treads ran for a moment, chunks of caked-on dirt falling to the ground.

“Excuse me,” it said again, and Micah could have sworn its voice was tired and pained. “Please. I can’t…I can’t see.”

“So what? Let him go.”

“Please. I can’t see.”

“You’re breaking my wrist,” Micah whispered, cringing as hot lances of pain shot up his arm. “Please, let me go.”

“I’m blind,” the robo-brain said, and there was confusion in the synthesized voice. “My god, I think I’ve gone blind.”

The claw twitched a bit, and Micah breathed with relief as its grip began to loosen.

“I’m sorry,” the robo-brain said. “I didn’t mean to injure you. I…my god, I didn’t mean to injure you! My combat drivers must have been knocked offline. What a…a _relief._ ”

Anna’s face twitched into an expression of unexpected pity, and she looked at Richie. He nodded, creeping up to the robo-brain and kneeling beside the thick glass dome of its ‘head’.

“Where am I?”  the robot asked. “All I really remember was the compulsion to move to the front lines. I’ve been looking for it for months.”

“That war ended a long time ago,” Richie said, pulling a rust-speckled combat knife from his belt. He grabbed hold of a thick cabling of wires running from the brain into the main chassis.

“Has it really?” the robo-brain asked, apparently oblivious to what Richie was doing. “Well. Did we win?”

“No,” Anna said, hovering over Micah as she tried to pry the claw off his wrist. “Nobody won.”

“What a shame,” the robo-brain said, rather sadly. “What a shame. So what happens now?”

“Depends,” Richie said, picking out a bundle of blue wires bound in rings of copper. “What do you remember?”

“Remember? What do you mean?”

“Were you always a brain in a jar?”

“Yes, of course. Model AFB-23861, designated unit Epsilon-C. Ready and primed to take back Anchorage.”

Anna whistled.

“Jesus, you belong in a museum.”

“No,” Richie said, softly under his breath. “It belongs in the ground.”

There was an edge of sadness so faint in the ghoul’s tone Micah almost missed it. The way he held the knife so gently poised, ready to cut…

“I think I’m damaged,” the robo-brain said, its treads running again. “And it’s so dark. I…I remember the dark. Waiting in the boxes. And then the boxes fell apart, and the man with the cow-skull helmet trying to take me apart…”

“Cow-skull,” Anna muttered. “Fiends. Always _did_ think those helmets were fuckin’ stupid.”

“Is that the new designation for the Reds, ma’am?” the robot asked. Anna didn’t answer.

“You probably had a name once,” Richie said. “Do you remember it?”

“Model AFB-23861, unit-”

“No,” Richie said forcefully. “That isn’t your name. Think, goddammit. Your _name._ You weren’t always like this. _They_ made you a monster. _Think._ ”

The robobrain fell silent, its treads still running, flaking off dirt.

“Model AFB-23861, unit Epsilon-C,” it said eventually, synthetic voice soft and uncertain. “Ready and primed to reclaim Anchorage. What are your orders, sir?”

Richie’s shoulders sagged, and he shook his head dolefully.

“I’m sorry they did this to you,” he said, and the combat knife cut roughly through the blue wires. Micah shouted in pain as the claw suddenly crushed down on his wrist, then went limp and released him.

“…I’m cold,” the robo-brain said, its voice a whisper. And suddenly it was silent. Richie knelt in the dirt a moment more, head bowed. Then he got up, sheathing the knife and hoisting Micah up by the collar.

“You can’t go five minutes without getting hurt, can you,” he said dryly. Micah’s wrist was already blackened with bruises, but by some miracle it wasn’t broken. Anna, quietly pilfering ammo from the dead robo-brain, finished picking it over and hopped over it. Richie looked down at her and Micah saw a world of sadness in his rheumy eyes. Anna said nothing, just looping her arm through his and walking away. Micah looked from them to the robot, only following after when he realized they were walking away whether he followed them or not.


End file.
